So I’m about to be delving back into the world of console gaming. The last console I owned was a Nintendo Entertainment System. Yes, the original NES. My friends growing up had the Genesis, so I played quite a lot on that too. I’ve been a gamer throughout, but have been a PC only gamer since about 1996. Needless to say, it’s been a long while since I’ve had console games to worry about.
My wife a few weeks ago said she was thinking she’d like to get a Wii. Seeing an opportunity to get a real gaming console, for all sorts of different games, I suggested we go with an Xbox 360+Kinect, which would give her (and me) some nice motion oriented games, and me a fully capable console for other games. After some research, she agreed this was the best way to go, and my parents agreed they’d get the 360/Kinect for us for Christmas. We’re probably going to get Dance Central 2, NHL 12 and Kinect Sports with the package, as those were the games we asked for.
However, having never owned an Xbox and such, there’s the entire library of games from inception until now open to me. For newer games, I’m aware of what’s out there and can read reviews and the like, but what are some must have games, from any time during the system’s life, that you can recommend and must have titles?
Here are a few things to keep in mind, and information about what I tend to like in gaming.
I have never played an Xbox 360 game in my life, aside from a few minutes here or there in the store. I have never even played Halo. The only Xbox 360 games that I have played are those that are also available for PC. (Bioshock, the Call of Duty series, etc…)
I love action games and first person shooters. However, if they are cross-platform, I’d prefer to play these on PC, as I prefer the keyboard/mouse controls to a gamepad for FPS games. (for instance, I have MW3 coming for PC this Christmas as well, more than likely). I am certainly open to these on the Xbox, though, if they are Xbox only or Xbox/PS3 only games, or if the game is simply a better experience on the Xbox.
I love sports games. This is one thing that has me really excited about getting a console again, as EA Sports has abandoned the PC, and I’ve been playing Madden 08 and NHL 06 for a little too long. I’m really pumped to get NHL 12. I’d like to get an updated Madden as well, though Madden 12 has gotten some middling reviews. I enjoy racing games too.
I like puzzle games, though I don’t know if I’d enjoy them on a console as much as I do on something smaller/more intimate like my iPhone or tablet.
I am not a big RPG guy. There are a handful of action/RPG type games that I have really enjoyed over the years (System Shock 2, Bioshock, etc.), but if they are more heavily oriented on the RPG side rather than the action side, I get bored VERY quickly. World of Warcraft had my interest for a short period of time but I lost interest after reaching Level 16 on my guy.
I’m certainly open to innovative games and any quite fun Kinect games (I know the Kinect library is limited, but a few look quite good).
Halo: Reach is your standard bearer for FPS’s on the 360. You can’t really go wrong with: the Gears of War series, Assassin’s Creed 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, or GTA IV, depending on what flavor of action you like.
Madden 12 got lukewarm reviews because the innovation has pretty much gone out the window; each year’s new title is primarily a roster update with a slight graphical/presentation improvement over the last, and even that’s becoming an increasingly slim difference. If you don’t care about up-to-date rosters, you can save a few bucks to get last year’s edition and get 95% the same product.
The Fable series are good RPG-like fantasy games. For a more action-oriented experience Mass Effect 2 is excellent.
Red Dead Redemption. You can’t get it for PC and it’s an amazing game. The atmosphere, the story, just the overall quality of it is as close to perfect as I think I’ve seen in an Xbox game. If you could only get one game this is the one I’d recommend.
The Saboteur. This game is way underrated. It’s a GTA style open world game mixed with Assassin’s Creed style climbing set in Paris during the Nazi occupation. It’s not as polished as a GTA game but it’s pure fun. Besides the normal driving and shooting you can slowly take down Nazi emplacements and checkpoints and once you blow them up they stay gone. It’s awesome taking back the city bit by bit. You can probably find it dirt cheap too.
If you like soccer the FIFA series is fantastic. I think FIFA 12 is the most recent one. You can get pretty in depth if you want, there are tons of skill moves and strategies that the really good players use, or you can be like me and pretty much just pass, tackle and shoot and still have a blast.
On preview I see Wakinyan mentioned Forza 4. If you like racing games, that’s a must buy. IMO the Forza series is every bit as good, if not better than, Gran Turismo for PS3, which puts it at the very top of the pile as far as racing games go.
Really, unless your rig is very low end, the difference in graphics and performance will probably shock you and you’ll probably want to stick with the PC version of most multi-plats.
Gears of Wars and Halo should probably be stop number 1 and 2.
Allan Wake is coming to PC, so I’d wait for that version.
Forza is probably another must along with project gotham racing.
Read Dead Redemption might not make it to the PC, Ninja Gaiden 2 is another great game.
Of course kinect titles are exclusive to it. I don’t have anything to recommend, except for Dance Central. Everything else sucks IMHO.
Steel Battalion coming next year looks promising.
As for sports, the madden’s and NHL’s of the world have changed little, but they’re still there, NBA 2012 and FIFA 12 are better on PC (as long as you use a gamepad for them).
The only Fable missing from the PC is fable 2, which got mixed reviews (everyone says fable 1 is the best game).
There are a few games that are cross platform, but more fun on a console. Taking a look at the xbox marketplace, two examples of such are castle crashers and geometry wars. They’re both “light” games that you can play for 30 minutes at a time, but still very satisfying and very cheap. Also, Civilization Revolution is a great “light” empire-building game which costs 10 bucks on the xbox marketplace and is every bit as satisfying as heavier PC civilization games in my opinion, which is very humble indeed.
Limbo. Excellent XBLA game with a great atmosphere.
Portal. Another great game. Either get it as a standalone or get the Half Life Episode 2 / Portal package.
Are you intending only to exclude shooters that are available on 360/PC or all games? If the controls are an issue you can just use your 360 controller for the PC amd get all the other benefits with the same controls.
FWIW, the only thing I play on xbox is Rock Band. I could probably get into some of the exclusive racing games, but after playing stuff like Dirt 2-3 on PC it’d be hard to downgrade.
Well, I dunno if you’re into platformers, but if you are: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is a sort of vehicle-based platformer, the latest iteration of the Banjo-Kazooie series (N64 platformers which are available on Xbox Live Arcade). It’s an older game, so you can find it cheap I’m sure, but the online community has pretty well dried up. Another nifty XBLA puzzle-platformer is The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. And of course everyone loves Braid and Limbo. Download the demos and test-drive 'em.
FPSes not yet mentioned: Dead Space and its sequel are always fun to play in a dark living room with surround sound. They are PC-available, so play wherever you prefer.
I’ll second the Assassin’s Creed series. The second was better than the first, though the first gives you some background to understand the second better. I’ve never played Brotherhood, and I’m not allowed to play Revelations until Christmas (my wife confiscated my Black Friday-bought copy and wrapped it, hehe). Another fun game with great music that I thought got too little attention was Brütal Legend, which you can buy brand-new for about ten bucks now. Great voice acting, great sense of humor, and an awesome heavy metal soundtrack; I pop it in sometimes just to drive around and listen to music.
Bayonetta one of the best action hack and slash ever. easy enough for beginners and complex enough for the hardcore.
Vanquish crazy over the top action with '80’s movie style cheese dialouge
Shadows of the Damned really fun underrated game be prepared for a lot of dick jokes some people hated that. it appealed to my inner 11 year old.
Fruit Ninja really fun you can probably pickup the the Gunstringer with it as a free bonus on the arcade marketplace.
The Splosion man games both Splosion man and MsSplosion man are great. great coop on these too.
Speaking of coop Gears of War all of them have great coop. Resident Evil 5 is 3 times as fun in coop. Portal 2 is great single player and coop both different.
Child of Eden should be cheap nowadays work so great with kinect and is really pretty and fun with catchy music.
Glad to see someone snuck in the Project Eden rec for Kinect, and it’s always good to see Castle Crashers get some love.
There are a lot of gems to be found on Xbox Live Arcade, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Xbox Live Indie Games. Even better, ALL of these games have demos so you know what you’re getting yourself into. I recommend:
Bastion - yeah, it’s sortof an RPG, but it’s pretty heavily actiony, and should do a good job of keeping you entertained.
Outland - sortof an Ikaruga meets Prince of Persia platformer/combat game. Play the demo, you’ll figure it out
Hard Corps: Uprising - If you liked Contra on the NES, this is your game.
Chime - an excellent sort of trancy puzzle game involving shapes and music.
Pac Man: Championship Edition DX - Stop giving me the funny look and play the demo ASAP.
Guardian Heroes - an “update” the excellent Sega Saturn beat 'em up. Smashingly good with friends.
Clash of Heroes - a solid puzzle game with some amusing RPG trappings.
Shadow Complex - a mighty fine “metroidvania” style game. If you don’t know what I mean, you will after you play the demo.
Protect Me Knight! (XBLIG) - Hilarious and awesome 8-bit styled monster bashing brawl, guaranteed playable by anyone who can push ‘A’.
Along these lines, I recommend Crackdown and/or Crackdown 2. They’ve been out long enough you should be able to pick them up cheap ($20 or under): that way if you find you don’t like them, you didn’t spend much. I believe they have demos available as well. The ‘plot’ is only there to give you an excuse to shoot stuff up. Or make it go ka-boom. Or use it as a bludgeon. (I think you get the idea.) It’s more fun co-op, but it doesn’t do split-screen.
Hey I know what you mean. If I hadn’t of bought it for my kids I would have been giving the funny looks.
I hate Pac-Man but this game is Amazing!
I can’t think of any game that creates an enclosed tunnel of obilvion direct from your eyes to the screen more than this one. It’s like crack for a fortnight. You can get broken into while playing this and not even notice it.
I would probably start with the AAA - exclusives - and ones with series get the earlier ones, and if you like that get the newer more expensive ones:
so
Start with Halo 3
If you like that, get Halo: ODST, Halo Reach, Halo Combat Evolved Anniversay (Halo 1 re-release)
Start with Gears of War 1
If you like that, get Gears of War 2, Gears of War 3
Fable II can be fun. Fable III sucks, IMO.
If you like racing games try Forza or Project Gotham Racing
I’d strongly suggest getting Batman:Arkham City (and grabbing Arkham Asylum while you’re at it, because why not ? It’s probably dirt cheap by now). Both are outstanding exploration slash face-breaking simulation slash stealth games. The combat is pretty darn awesome, they both have plenty of “Woaaah” moments, and if the boss fights of the first are meh, the second one corrected that flaw. Somewhat.
Why get them on console rather than PC ? Well, you can play with mouse and keyboard but really, it’s meant to be played with a pad (although I suppose if you have an USB pad, the choice is yours).
Seconding Assassin’s Creed. Forget the first, it’s not absolute crap but it’s very repetitive and unpolished. Start with 2, then Brotherhood. Haven’t tried Revelations yet, though opinions were that it was a bit of a letdown (mostly it’s Brotherhood with a new setting and even easier). That being said, I’m a big fan of silly secret society conspiracy stories, so I play them for the wonky plot as much as the game itself.
I’m pretty fond of the Tenchu series, so I liked Tenchu:Wrath of Heaven but I’ll admit it’s not a game everyone can enjoy. It’s more or less a pure stealth game with some actiony (and clunky) boss fights. As such there’s lots of waiting, watching, timing your strikes and so forth. It’s a game that requires patience, but is extremely satisfying when your plan goes down exactly as you planned. And raises a lot of adrenaline when a guard does something you hadn’t anticipated and oh fuck gotta run gotta hide. I’d suggest grabbing a demo if there is one, just in case.
**L.A. Noire **is pretty cool and different, though I guess that one works on the PC as well.
I disagree with this. The PC fork of Asylum implemented mouse input perfectly, and the quick, precise camera control outweighs the advantages of an analog stick, because it achieves the same results (full directional control on maneuvers) and more besides. I got fairly into the combat challenge scoring and there’s no way I’d switch to my gamepad.
The mouse is indeed nice to swirl around and do basic attack and basic block - but from what I remember from playing the first game on keyboard+mouse, the quick batarangs/claw/throws etc… were very awkward and annoying to use. I found my combats flowed really more smoothly with the pad (except for quick bombgel, which for some reason always trips my battle rythm).
To each his own I suppose.
